On the modern battlefield, many belligerents use active protection systems (APS) to protect their tanks and other armored vehicles from being detected and destroyed by enemy weapons such as anti-tank guided missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. The APS is placed on the vanguard to provide the protection and typically employs radars to detect and track the enemy missiles. The detection and the initial tracking of the incoming missile is then followed by appropriate counter attacks against them. Therefore, for a missile to achieve effective destruction of the targeted tanks and other armored vehicles, the initial detection by the APS radar must be avoided. Such avoidance of detection by APS radar by rendering the radar ineffective is referred to as counter-APS (CAPS).
To date, the most prominent CAPS technique involved the use of components of electronic warfare such as conformal antennas, radio frequency (RF) modules, signal processing units and power conditioning elements. These components were rendered into self-contained jamming kits, except the conformal antennas which were mounted on the surface of the missile. The kits were then inserted into anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) to operate independently of the ATGM""s primary guidance mode. Major problems with such kits include limited antenna gain resulting in reduced effectiveness of the jamming kit, high power consumption and increased weight of the missile.
In-Seeker Jamming Device is located in the seeker portion of an RF missile and utilizes the high-gain antenna and amplifier that are already a part of the missile. During the xe2x80x9cblind rangexe2x80x9d between the termination of the missile""s active tracking of the target at a pre-selected distance from the target and its impact on the target, the Jamming Device produces signals that are broadcast via the missile""s antenna and are designed to jam and frustrate the APS radars, thereby rendering the APS radars ineffective and the intended targets vulnerable.